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'Action's always illegal': Owens' Whistle Watch review of Farrell red

(Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Retired Test centurion referee Nigel Owens has addressed the recent Owen Farrell red card on the latest edition of Whistle Watch.

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The World Rugby-produced weekly review came in for some criticism last week when it avoided reference to the August 12 incident at Twickenham that resulted in the England skipper being red-carded via the TMO bunker after his initially yellow-carded offence.

On sending Farrell to the sin bin, referee Nika Amashukeli explained that the tackle on Wales’ Taine Basham would be reviewed by the TMO bunker and the verdict that emerged was that the tackle merited a red card.

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This resulted in Farrell attending a virtually-held independent disciplinary hearing three days later where the red card was rescinded and the England out-half was freed to play on with immediate effect.

World Rugby appealed this decision and only now, after it emerged on Tuesday evening that Farrell must serve a four-match ban, has the Whistle Watch programme fronted by Owens given its review of the tackle on Basham.

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“I’m sure a lot of you tuned in last week to hear what the review on the Farrell red card was,” began the Welshman. “Because of the judicial process, we don’t explain our views on it to be fair to everyone involved. But let us cover exactly what had happened and I want you to take away all the emotion.

“What you look at is, is their foul play? Yes, we have foul play and the foul play is leading with the shoulder. The arm is down by the side, so the arm is not ready to make that legal tackle, that wrap.

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“If the arm is here ready (Owens holds his arms up in wrap position) and the shoulder makes contact first and we have an illegal tackle, then we only look at the height of the tackle and then we bring the mitigation to it.

“But we have an illegal action so the shoulder is leading, the arm is down here and we have contact direct to the head, so we have foul play and a high degree of danger.

“Do we then have any mitigation? I explained to you, no, we don’t because the action is always illegal, so mitigation does not play a part in the referee’s decision-making process.

“What the referee looks at here, as you saw in the game, is he decided this had reached the yellow card threshold and was thinking this could be more.

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“So it goes to the bunker and the bunker reviews it and because of yes, we have foul play, yes, we have direct contact to the head, yes, we have a high degree of danger, we have no mitigation, therefore it is upgraded to a red card.”

Having been stood down from playing against Ireland last Saturday ahead of the appeal, that Summer Nations Series fixture was counted as the first of the four England games that the Farrell ban covers.

He will also miss this Saturday’s final August warm-up versus Fiji as well as the opening two England matches at the Rugby World Cup, the September 9 clash versus Argentina in Marseille and the September 17 meeting with Japan in Nice.

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Comments

2 Comments
d
dk 699 days ago

Such a shame Nigel is no longer reffing. Absolute class.

K
KiwiSteve 699 days ago

Can we move on? The bunker ref found red. The citing committee found yellow on appeal. On appeal appeal the WRU agreed with the bunker ref. So the bunker ref is working as intended. Farrell is marmite but no one deserves this sort of persistent malignant social / media. Yeh it sells newspapers creates eyeballs etc. People don't like him but he is still a guy who just wants to give his best for his country. Every person deserves a chance to redeem themselves. Unless everyone else is perfect.

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Soliloquin 1 hour ago
Competing interests and rotated squads: What the 'player welfare summer' is really telling us

I don’t know the financial story behind the changes that were implemented, but I guess clubs started to lose money, Mourad Boudjellal won it all with Toulon, got tired and wanted to invest in football , the French national team was at its lowest with the QF humiliation in 2015 and the FFR needed to transform the model where no French talent could thrive. Interestingly enough, the JIFF rule came in during the 2009/2010 season, so before the Toulon dynasty, but it was only 40% of the players that to be from trained in French academies. But the crops came a few years later, when they passed it at the current level of 70%.

Again, I’m not a huge fan of under 18 players being scouted and signed. I’d rather have French clubs create sub-academies in French territories like Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia and other places that are culturally closer to RU and geographically closer to rugby lands. Mauvaka, Moefana, Taofifenua bros, Tolofua bros, Falatea - they all came to mainland after starting their rugby adventure back home.

They’re French, they come from economically struggling areas, and rugby can help locally, instead of lumping foreign talents.

And even though many national teams benefit from their players training and playing in France, there are cases where they could avoid trying to get them in the French national team (Tatafu).

In other cases, I feel less shame when the country doesn’t believe in the player like in Meafou’s case.

And there are players that never consider switching to the French national team like Niniashvili, Merckler or even Capuozzo, who is French and doesn’t really speak Italian.

We’ll see with Jacques Willis 🥲


But hey, it’s nothing new to Australia and NZ with PI!

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